"Of course."
"I can't think what your telegram meant," he said. "Lena isn't dangerously ill, or anything like it."
Then Mrs. Lakeman tried to pump up a little dramatic energy. "Tom Carringford," she said, "do you know that I am the best friend you ever had?"
"I know that you have been awfully good to me."
"Shall I tell you why I telegraphed as I did?"
"I wish you would, for I can't make it out."
"Dawson Farley told me about Margaret Vincent—I have heard a great deal about Margaret Vincent lately, from a good many sources. Tom," she went on, in a suddenly tragic voice, "I loved Gerald Vincent; I have never really cared for anybody else, but this girl is different; she has been brought up by a common mother."
"She is not at all common," he answered, indignantly. "I saw her—"
"And a half-sister who, twenty years ago, would have been in respectable service instead of wasting her time at home, for the mother looks after the farm herself. Margaret belongs to her mother's people and not to her father's; you can hear that in her provincial accent"—the accent, of course, was invented on the spur of the moment—"and she was quite content to marry her Guildford grocer, or whatever he is, until she became stage-struck."
"Look here," said Tom; "you are a good soul, and have been very kind to me, but you mustn't talk to me in this way, for I'm engaged to Margaret, and I mean to marry her."